Experimental Investigation of Dynamic Characteristics of Subsea Sand-Silt Mixtures

Abstract

In this paper, extensive resonant column tests were conducted to investigate dynamic responses of subsea sand-silt mixtures. The effects of confining pressure, mixture ratio, curing age, and cement content were evaluated. For the test condition considered in this study, the measured damping ratio is the smallest when the ratio of subsea sand to silt is in a range of 1.5 to 2.0. Moreover, unsolidified subsea sand-silt mixed at a ratio of 1.5 has almost the same maximum shear stiffness as the pure sand. For solidified subsea sand-silt mixture, cement can significantly increase the dynamic shear stiffness when the curing age is less than 14 days. However, the increase of the maximum dynamic shear stiffness is negligible when the curing age is longer than 14 days. When the cement content is 2%, the damping ratio of the solidified mixtures is very close to that of the unsolidified mixture. When the cement content is higher than 4%, the damping ratio of the solidified mixtures reduces significantly. This is mainly due to hydration reactions occurring in the solidified mixtures.